President Trump gave away flashlights during his visit to Puerto Rico, and made remarks about a “goodbye” to the island’s debt that his officials appear to be walking back.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Puerto Rico’s benchmark general obligation bonds maturing in 2035 traded at record lows of 30 cents on the dollar Wednesday, down from roughly 44 cents late Tuesday and 56 cents the day before Hurricane Maria hit. Holders of the bonds, which include mutual funds, hedge funds and direct investors, sold in heavy volume.

Howard Cure of Evercore Wealth Management told The WSJ: “I think the market was very anxious about the paper to begin with.”

David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors told Politico: “No idea what [Trump] means. It certainly threw a curve at markets.”

A reminder

Here are Mr. Trump’s comments on Puerto Rico, in an interview with Fox News:

A looming deadline

Puerto Rico’s Treasury secretary, Raúl Maldonado, said the government could shut down on Oct. 31 if Congress doesn’t provide billions of dollars in emergency funds. (He has requested $6 billion to $8 billion.)

“Essentially you’re looking at zero revenue for the next couple of months … While you have zero revenue, you still have expenditures, plus emergency expenditures. That means the money is going to run out very quickly.”

• Baupost owns Cofina bonds, which are backed by some of Puerto Rico’s sales tax revenue.

• The hedge fund bought the bonds through a shell company named Decagon Holdings.

More from The Intercept:

But while GoldenTree and Whitebox were known Cofina bondholders, Baupost had never publicly stated that they owned Puerto Rican debt. When Roll Call asked Sean Neary, a spokesperson for the coalition of Cofina bondholders, about Baupost’s role, he would only say, “They are not part of the steering committee group that is the main driver of the coalition.”

Must-read

Antonio Weiss, the former Lazard deal maker who worked on Puerto Rico issues while serving in the Obama administration, argues in an NYT op-ed that the island’s debt should be cut as much as possible:

President Trump, who visited Puerto Rico on Tuesday, has said in tweets that the island’s debts “sadly must be dealt with.” That is true — but not by enhancing creditors’ returns. Instead, the island’s crushing debt should be reduced to the maximum extent through the legal framework established by Congress last year.

Bloomberg Fights Back Against Goldman-Financed Rival

The financial information juggernaut plans to roll out a $10-a-month-per-user chat service, available to all customers, by the end of the year, according to The FT.

The reason

To combat Symphony, the “Bloomberg killer” backed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock and a slew of other financial firms.

The tale of the tape

• Bloomberg’s standard service bundle, terminal and all, costs $22,000 a year per user for a two-year contract.

• Symphony costs $20 a month per user.

• Bloomberg has about 33 percent of the financial data market, per The FT. Thomson Reuters has 23 percent.

• But Bloomberg’s installed base fell slightly last year, to 324,485 terminals, according to Burton-Taylor International Consulting.

The context

• Symphony was born after reports in 2013 that Bloomberg reporters were using terminal data to gather information on bank employees.

Morgan Downey, the C.E.O. of a financial data service and a former Bloomberg employee, told The FT: “They’re betting the whole system without chat is worth $21,900 a year. Is it? Maybe for some old bond traders, but for everyone else, I don’t think so.”

FT Lex: “The next problem for Bloomberg is to figure out if it can create new products that get users excited about paying full price again.”

The bank will put over 150,000 lines of code from its award-winning electronic platform Autobahn into the public domain so that trading applications from different providers can use it as a shared foundation and work seamlessly with each other.

SoftBank’s Tender Offer for Uber Shares Begins

The details, per Serena Saitto, Alfred Lee and Amir Efrati of The Information:

• SoftBank will buy existing shares at a valuation of $50 billion, or $35 per share.

• Employees can sell up to 50 percent of their holdings.

• The first stage of the tender offer will run for 30 days. If SoftBank doesn’t get at least 14 percent of Uber’s outstanding stock, it will raise its offer price.

• It would be the first major I.P.O. of a Russian company in London since 2014, when Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia over its incursion into Ukraine.

Worth noting

• A $500 million cornerstone investment in the forthcoming I.P.O. will come from a company associated with CEFC China Energy, which also owns a $9 billion stake in Rosneft, the big Russian oil company.

Just a Coincidence?

Revolving Door

• Marni Walden, the head of Verizon’s global media operations — including Yahoo and AOL, whose takeovers she helped lead — will leave the company in February.

• Greg Fleming, the veteran deal maker who worked in senior positions at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, has become the C.E.O. of Rockefeller Capital Management, an investment and advisory firm formed from the Rockefeller family’s investment vehicle.